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Jon Gosselin Pulls a Gun on a Photographer

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Former reality TV star turned waiter Jon Gosselin reportedly pulled a gun on a photographer in Pennsylvania on Friday.

According to TMZ, the erstwhile Jon & Kate Plus 8 star got upset when a shutterbug followed him home from his new job waiting tables at the Black Dog restaurant in Beckersville, Pa.

She allegedly trailed him off the main roads and onto a dirt road as he headed to his isolated country cabin (where he has no Internet or TV), and when she whipped out her camera and started taking pics, Gosselin, 36, angrily approached her and allegedly pulled a gun out of the back of his pants.

The photographer claims the father of eight yelled at her for trespassing and then fired off a warning shot. He then followed her until she got back on the main road, she says.


Gosselin, meanwhile, acknowledges the incident but insists that he acted well within his rights.

"I am licensed to carry a concealed handgun, which I withdrew and used to fire a warning shot away from the paparazza," he tells TMZ.

Gosselin's lawyer declined to comment.
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Freida Pinto at Salvatore Ferragamo Boutique Opening

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Dressed in Ferragamo head to toe, Freida attended the opening of the brand’s boutique in Milan. At first glance, I wasn’t feeling the t-strap dominatrix-style sandals, but the more I look, the less I mind it.






with Ferruccio Ferragamo:




with Fulvia Visconti Ferragamo:




with ferragamo director Massimiliano Giornetti and Model Karolina Kurkova:






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Why TV's Top Show will always be snubbed at the Emmys

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If timing is everything, then "NCIS" has nothing. At least where the Primetime Emmys are concerned.
No, TV's most-watched show was not nominated for Outstanding Drama Series, nor has it ever been nominated for Outstanding Drama Series, nor perhaps will it ever be nominated.
"I just couldn't see it happening," says Jonathan Nichols-Pethick, author of "TV Cops: The Contemporary American Television Police Drama."
Maybe we should rephrase: Bad timing is everything.
The beginning of the end was in the beginning. In 2004, the first year that "NCIS" was eligible for an Emmy, "The Sopranos" became the first cable show to claim the top drama prize.



Prior to the breakthrough win, broadcast TV, episodic TV, police procedurals, and spinoffs — "NCIS," a descendant of "JAG," for those who have forgotten, is a member of all four categories — were welcome in the Drama Series category, sometimes beyond welcome.
For nearly 40 years, from 1962 to 2003, if you weren't broadcast and you weren't episodic, you probably weren't nominated. During roughly the same period, there was no notion that police shows were nonstarters with Emmy voters because they weren't. In the 1980s, for instance, "Hill Street Blues" and "Cagney & Lacey" together collected six of that decade's drama series wins. "Law & Order" claimed the trophy in 1997. "CSI" was nominated for three straight years, from 2002 to 2004. Spinoffs were represented, too, with the likes of "Lou Grant," "Star Trek: The Next Generation," and, more recently, "Boston Legal" earning nods and the odd win.

But then came "The Sopranos."

Since its victory in 2004, only two broadcast TV shows, "Lost" and "24," have prevailed in the category; not one episodic series has won.
For "NCIS," things only got worse after "The Sopranos" bowed out.

In 2008, even as "NCIS" began surging in the Nielsen ratings, "Mad Men" and "Damages" crashed the basic-cable ceiling (with "Mad Men" notching its first drama series win), and the game was really, truly over for broadcast, episodic, police-procedural, spinoff TV.
"In general, these dramas coming out of AMC and FX and HBO and Showtime and Netflix, they're able to explore darker corners," says Nichols-Pethick. "They're infinitely more captivating. They're able to be a lot braver. Really just because of regulation, [broadcast shows] just can't go to those places as easily."

Also, a cable show can get there in 13 episodes or less; the broadcast model still usually dictates that producers crank out 22 episodes.

And so the numbers, from the prodigious work orders to the ever-growing number of cable (and now streaming) shows fighting for spots at the table (go talk Emmy snubs with a "Sons of Anarchy" fan), don't add up for "NCIS," perhaps the ultimate example of right show, wrong time. It's a giant, all right — an impressive dinosaur at the end of the Mesozoic Era.
"I actually don't think 'NCIS' would ever win, even as a sentimental thing ... especially with the cable networks out to make the next show that everybody's talking about," says Nichols-Pethick.
And being talked about has never been one of the strengths of "NCIS," what with the bad timing and all.


This isn't surprising. It has had worthy seasons but the article is right about the moment passing & the advantage of cable. I would trade awards for the 500k per ep paycheck tho.
In b4 "who watches this show??"


for queenmaybelline

Drake wears shirt of Jaden Smith getting his life to his VMA performance at iHeartRadio Festival

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Drake attends the iHeartRadio Music Festival at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on September 20, 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada.






Top (10) 5 Episodes of Breaking Bad

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We've compiled our list of ten five favorite episodes and why we think they're so great. We've also created a poll (at Source) for you to sound off on your favorites.
In our list below, we've tried to stick to picking one episode from each of the shorter seasons (1, 5A and 5B), and two from the longer seasons (2, 3 and 4).  Yes. With two episodes left, this comes a little early, but since Bad creator Vince Gilligan says "Ozymandias" is the best the series has ever done, we feel comfortable marking it as our favorite for season 5B.

"Pilot" (Season 1, Episode 1)
What Happens: After learning he has lung cancer and just a few years to live, Walt gets an interest in the meth business and enlists Jesse for their first cook. Things go very sour after Krazy 8 and Emilio end up at their RV and threaten to kill the pair. Walt gets the best of them by whipping up some poison gas.
Why it's the best: Has there ever been a more daring opening scene to a drama pilot? We meet Walter White – on the verge of a police shootout – making a confession tape to his family. More importantly, all the ingredients to see the journey from Mr. Chips to Scarface are here. The episode shows us his ineffectual existence as Walter White and the first inklings of Heisenberg.

"Peekaboo" (Season 2, Episode 6)
What happens: Jesse tracks down a meth-addicted couple to get back the money they stole from Skinny Pete. He unexpectedly finds a little boy in the couple's disgusting home, and is later held at gunpoint as Spooge attempts to open up an ATM he stole. After calling his wife a skank one too many times, she crushes his head with the ATM. Jesse calls the cops, escapes, and sits the boy on his front porch, telling him to wait.
Why it's the best: We see a new side of Jesse in the form of his soft spot for children, which is something that Walt will exploit later in the series. It's also one of the relatively few times we see the consequences of Walt's and Jesse's activities have on drug users.

. "Fly" (Season 3, Episode 10)
What happens: Walt becomes obsessed with a fly in his superlab, and enlists Jesse to help him kill it. Seriously. That's pretty much it.
Why it's the best: While Bad is full of expansive storytelling, "Fly" is the show's most self-contained—taking place almost entirely in the superlab. It also features Walt at his weakest – addled and exhausted, he nearly confesses his role in Jane's death and expresses the wish he had died that night, before going out to have a drink with Jane's father. "If I had just lived right up to that moment, and not one second more," he says, "that would have been perfect," referencing a moment in "Phoenix" in which he was watching TV and could hear Skyler singing a lullaby to Holly through the baby monitor.


"Face Off" (Season 4, episode 13)
What happens: Walt learns from Jesse (via Saul) that Gus has a habit of visiting Hector Salamanca to torment him. Walt teams up with Hector to take out Gus and makes it appear Hector has become a DEA informant. Walt rigs a bomb to go off when Hector rings his bell. Gus comes to Hector's nursing home to kill him and has half of his face blown off when a vengeful Hector detonates the bomb.
Why it's the best: This is Walt at his most brilliant, and he outsmarts his most formidable opponent in an incredibly surprising way. The episode also marks a huge turning point for how we view Walt, who we learn has poisoned a child. When he tells Skyler "I won," it's a pure Heisenberg moment. There's an arrogance in the way he says it, and that arrogance would carry over into the coming episodes in a big way.

"Ozymandias" (Season 5, episode 14)
What happens: There's much to say here. But here it goes: Hank dies. The Aryan gang steals most of Walt's money. Walt confesses his role in Jane's death – telling Jesse just to hurt him. He also let's the Aryan gang take Jesse away to be tortured and killed. Walt Jr. learns the truth about his father, and Skyler and Walt get into a knife fight in front of him, forcing Jr. to call the police. Walt abducts baby Holly, and then calls Skyler (knowing the police are listening) and basically confesses to everything as a way to clear Skyler. He leaves Holly at a fire station and calls Saul's disappearing guy, who takes him away to give him a new identity.
Why it's the best: Years of storytelling come together for this episode – and it's executed flawlessly. Vince Gilligan says it's the best episode of the series. For more, we suggest reading our Q&A with director Rian Johnson about how he nailed the episode, and Dean Norris, about what it was like to play Hank a final time, and how his death was originally going to play out.


Full list and poll at source

Miley Cyrus Dances with Little People, Defends Stage Antics: It's What My Heart Is Telling Me To Do

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Miley Cyrus enlisted the help of several dancing little people to perform at iHeartRadio in Las Vegas on Saturday afternoon. Cyrus delivered a four-song set at the Clear Channel festival’s outdoor Village stage, which including the first ever live rendition of her No. 1 single “Wrecking Ball.”

Following crowd chants of “Miley! Miley! Miley!” the singer was introduced by Glee cast member Darren Criss, who noted, “She needs no introduction.” Cyrus, dressed in white laced-up lingerie and a daisy necklace, emerged onstage alongside several little people, some dressed as mushrooms and flowers, and two dancers wearing a giant rainbow costume. The stage’s drum set was covered with a photo of Cyrus’ sticking out her tongue.
The singer’s set included “We Can’t Stop,” the first single off her upcoming album Bangerz, as well as 2009 hit “Party In the U.S.A.” After an audience member tossed a purple bra onstage, Cyrus said, “I know it’s hot as f--- but thanks so much for being here and especially for making my new single ‘Wrecking Ball’ No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 this week.”

As she strutted across the stage, Cyrus noted that while the things she’s been doing onstage and in her music videos are “getting me in trouble,” she feels “it’s just me doing what my heart and soul is telling me to do.” She added, “Everything is inspired by the music.”
In honor of this sentiment, Cyrus performed “Look What They’ve Done To My Song,” an acoustic, countrified ballad originally sung by Melanie Safka, seemingly about being scrutinized by the public and media. As she feigned tears, the musician sang lines like “They’ve picked it like a chicken bone and they think I’m half insane / Look what they’ve done to my brain.”
It’s unconfirmed at this point whether the new track will appear on Bangerz, Cyrus’ fourth studio album, which is due out Oct. 8 via RCA.

Cyrus ended her performance with “Wrecking Ball,” thanking fans their support. “I thought today would be a good time to do this for the first time for all my fans,” Cyrus said.
The singer will also perform this evening at iHeartRadio following an introduction by Britney Spears and Rebel Wilson.
Jason Derulo, Avril Lavigne and The Band Perry also play short sets at this afternoon’s Village event, which took place in a parking lot across the street from the MGM Grand where the main event is being held. The artists appeared on two alternating stages throughout the afternoon, concluding with a performance by The Wanted.




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THE 20 MOST MEMORABLE EMMY DRESSES OF ALL TIME (But not really, lbr)

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Mischa Barton glistened in a form-fitting champagne colored Oscar de la Renta spaghetti-strap gown.



It’s awards season again! The 65th Primetime Emmy Awards will air this Sunday on CBS (at 8 p.m. EST), and we can’t wait to see what host Neil Patrick Harris has in store for us. With the current TV climate being stronger than ever, nearly all of the categories feature strong performances and worthy nominees, from Kerry Washington to Lena Dunham.

Of course, we’re most excited about the red carpet. Every year, the small screen’s finest bring their A-game when it comes to the Emmys, and in recent years, we’ve seen starlets like Sofia Vergara kill the competition in a mermaid Zuhair Murad gown and Claire Danes redefine maternity chic in Lanvin.

The history of the Emmys red carpet is packed with some dazzling moments, as well, like Mischa Barton making spaghetti straps chic in Oscar de la Renta back in 2005, and Sarah Jessica Parker doing Carrie Bradshaw proud in Chanel couture back in 2004.

In honor of this Sunday’s show, take a look back at the 20 most memorable Emmys dresses of all time!



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Va-va-voom! Sofia Vergara flaunted her trademark curves in this mermaid Zuhair Murad dress in 2012.



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Olivia Wilde cut a stunning figure in a one shouldered Marchesa gown in 2009.



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Pregnant and fabulous! Claire Danes accepted her "Homeland" Emmy in a yellow Lanvin gown.


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Ginnifer Goodwin wore a whimsical Monique Lhuillier number at the 2012 Emmys.

The rest at the source: stylecaster.com


Agree? Disagree? And what would you wear to the Emmys?

Katy Perry praises Miley Cyrus, would ‘maybe’ collaborate with Wrecking Ball singer

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“Wrecking Ball” meets “Roar”? It could happen.

Katy Perry says she’s a fan of Miley Cyrus and would consider collaborating with the young singer.

“Maybe… she’s got an incredible voice,” Katy, 28, told E! News at the iHeart Radio Music Festival in Las Vegas on Friday night, when asked if she’d duet with 20-year-old Miley.

Katy, whose new song “Dark Horse” is already climbing up the charts, said she heard an early version of Miley’s emotional new ballad before it was released – and she knew it would be a hit.

“I heard her sing ‘Wrecking Ball’ before that single came out, and I Tweeted about it a long time ago before it even came out, and I was just so excited about it for her,” she said. “She’s got a set of pipes that are incredible.”

Juicy J, who is featured on Katy’s “Dark Horse,” also chimed in about Miley, who he collaborated with on Mike Will Made It’s “23.”

“It’s like not even real to me! I have to pinch myself,” he said, of working with Miley. “It’s almost like a dream come true ‘cause she is super talented.”

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Last Show of the American Leg of the Red Tour was pretty cool

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duet with Hunter Hayes "I want crazy":



sbt as the last surprise song rip ttws:


ed pretending to be a cowboy i guess:


then he dressed up as a clown for we are never you don't have to make this joke/end of the show:


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terrible qt pictures:
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she baked a cake for her fans what a cutie:
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she also got a bunch of these before her nashville shows #slaying :
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cute vine with cute product placement before the first nashville show:


heeey people that actually like tswift! what was your fave surprise song/duet/part of the setlist? how tired are you of our song? what do you think she'll replace ehc with? how sad were you when stay stay stay was cut? what would you like to see in australia/europe leg of the tour?
i've given up on the moment i knew so i am waiting for her to at least sing sweeter than fiction while there

123456

best tour i've never been to! see u in australia.

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Jennifer Lawrence's alleged stalker will be held in police custody until his trial begins

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U.S. Magistrate Judge Dave Whalin concluded after a two-hour hearing in Louisville, Kentucky, on Wednesday that Han Cong Zhao, 23, of Vancouver, Canada - who was arrested in April for harassing the Oscar-winning actress's brother Blaine Lawrence with over 200 phone calls, emails, and text messages, in which he claimed to be Jennifer's "husband for life" - could be a danger to her family and others if he was released on bail or flee to his native China.

According to the Huffington Post, the judge said: "Mr. Zhao has no connections here and apparently not strong connections in Canada. The evidence is strong. He presents a danger."

Mr. Zhao will appear before a federal grand jury by mid-October and is charged with interstate stalking and repeated harassing phone communications.

The defendant allegedly used computer programs to hide his identity and location when he first started contacting Jennifer's brother in early April, but eventually travelled to her hometown of Louisville and gave his real name.

FBI Special Agent Nicholas Zarro said that many of the messages indicated the 'Silver Linings Playbook' star was in danger, made references to the Bible, and some threatened her family members if they did not put Zhao in contact with her.

Jennifer's family reportedly became extremely worried when he said "bad things" would happen, adding he "wouldn't kill anyone for sure," but "all hell's going to break loose".

SOURCE

Demi Lovato performs Without The Love for the first time

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i chose the pretty ones
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twitter qtness:
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other songs i care about everthing else is at the source:



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(5 of) TV's 22 "Smartest" People on Their Favorite Shows

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From 'The Daily Show' to 'House of Cards,' TV’s creators, writers and stars on their favorite shows



'The Good Wife,' by 'Parks and Recreation' Star Adam Scott
You know how on The West Wing, you wished you were as smart as those people? I get the same joy from watching The Good Wife.




'Curb Your Enthusiasm,' by 'Orange Is the New Black' Star Natasha Lyonne
Larry David makes me feel a whole lot better about pretending to know how to function in the world. As a neurotic Jewish New York actress, I get myself into a lot of Curb Your Enthusiasm situations. It's like, "I just totally took your parking spot and you are clearly in a wheelchair." Curb makes me feel there's a language for that.



'Bad Girls Club,' by 'Parks and Recreation' Star Aubrey Plaza
The tackiest show I watch – and I'm not ashamed – is Bad Girls Club on Oxygen. It's brilliant! They get a bunch of badass bitches, put them in a house together and tell them the only rule is that they can't punch each other in the face or they get kicked out. And every episode, without fail, someone gets punched in the face. It's a weird social experiment where all the girls are trying to be the alpha bitch, so they're all provoking each other and trying to get another girl to punch them in the face. Some of them have strategies and align themselves with other girls to fuck over someone else. It's a good way to understand how society works.



'The Walking Dead,' by 'Once Upon a Time' Star Ginnifer Goodwin
The Walking Dead is really about who we are at our base level. The last two episodes, I was a bawling mess on my couch over two characters who are not supposed to be the most warm, fuzzy or innocent. It's the same reaction I had reading Lolita, where I was like, "I cannot believe that you have made me sympathize with Humbert Humbert."



'Scandal,' by 'Parks and Recreation' Star Aziz Ansari
It's the 24 of dramas. I went through a huge binge watch a few weeks ago with my little brother and my little cousins. Kerry Washington is Olivia Pope, the coolest D.C. fixer. I want to do a crossover episode with Parks and Rec. It would be fantastic: Leslie Knope is going through some big things in Pawnee and my character, Tom Haverford, is like, "I have a friend who can help." "Leslie Knope, Olivia Pope. Let's handle this." Done.



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Jake Gyllenhaal & Girlfriend Alyssa Miller Hold Hands in NYC

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Jake Gyllenhaal and his girlfriend Alyssa Miller hold hands while grabbing coffee together on Saturday afternoon (September 21) in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City.

The 32-year-old actor’s new filmPrisoners opened in theaters this weekend and it is set to top the box office!

Jake made an appearance on Inside the Actors Studio this week and talked about gay rumors that surfaced after his work in Brokeback Mountain.

“It’s a huge compliment,” he said (viaBravo). And as for what turns him on, Jake says his tastes are simple: “Tits and ass.”



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justjared

Sleepy Hollow': See Ichabod Crane struggle with modern technology while shirtless

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On the second episode of Fox drama Sleepy Hollow— which nabbed 10 million viewers with its Sept. 16 premiere— Captain Frank Irving (Orlando Jones) and Lieutenant Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie) are trying to make sense of the new mystery man about town, Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison), who claims to have decapitated a Hessian soldier during the Revolutionary War that is now terrorizing their little town. Meanwhile, Ichabod is trying to wrap his brain around such modern marvels as hair dryer, coffee maker, and indoor plumbing. The TV gives him a good jolt too. Check it out in the following clip from “Blood Moon,” which airs Monday at 9 p.m.

When Ichabod finally does getting around to putting on his shirt in the episode, he and Abbie go on the hunt for a centuries-old vengeful witch who “has been awoken by unknown evils and is on a path of destruction.”

Sounds scary. Better borrow the Headless Horseman’s machine gun.


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http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/09/20/sleepy-hollow-ichabod-crane-blood-moon-video/

Teen Wolf Season 3B: Flashbacks of young Chris Argent

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The upcoming second half of “Teen Wolf” Season 3 will reportedly feature some flashbacks on character Chris Argent during his teenager years. The E!Online spoiler report reveals that the flashback on Daddy Argent could show his dark side when he was 18 years old plus a glimpse of a Yakuza warrior as the TV series’ keeps up with the Asian theme.

Series creator Jeff Davis shared that the second half of “Teen Wolf” Season 3 will feature “a heavy Asian influence.” Additionally, the Chris Argent flashback scenes will show a “heated battle with a kind of evil not yet seen on the series.”

Mr Davis divulged at the 2013 San Dieo Comic Con that the MTV series will be heading towards the new Kitsune myth. “It is a very, very fascinating Japanese shapeshifter myth about the were-fox and the trickster spirit,” the series creator stated at the Comic Con event.

Korean-American model and actress Arden Cho has been cast for a role in “Teen Wolf” but it is still uncertain if she will portray the Kitsune character. The new “Teen Wolf” character that has been revealed is the new student named Kira with a Japanese descent and connection to the Kitsune myth.

The creator and executive producer Jeff Davis along with his “Teen Wolf” team remains tight lipped whether Kira is in fact the Kitsune, so speculations are now running wild on the character’s direction in the show. No confirmation has been given as well as to who will be the Yakuza warrior in the flashback or if the character, male or female, could be a part of Chris Argent’s heated battle with the unseen kind of evil.

Giving a brief background to the Yakuza world, the Hypable.com report explains: “The Yakuza are members of organized crime groups in Japan, although their members exist around the world. While not all of their business is illegal, they do seem to have less than stellar reputations. They’re also known for strict codes of honor that even the Argent family would probably be proud of.”

The “Teen Wolf” crew and cast members arecurrently busy filming the new episodes for the second half of Season 3. Beacon Hill’s supernatural teenagers will be returning to MTV for a brand new season on January 6, 2014.

Source


Dexter’s Terrible Final Season and How Breaking Bad Ruined the Series

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Think back to the late fall of 2007, if you can. If you were a TV buff at that time, there were a handful of shows that mattered. The Sopranos had just ended its run, while Mad Men had just begun. 30 Rock had come roaring onto the scene over the course of the calendar year, unleashing many of its funniest episodes. And one of the big questions left hanging by the TV season that had ended the previous spring was what, exactly, was up with Lost’s flash-forwards.

Yet the show of the moment, arguably the most buzzed-about program of that point in time, was Dexter, Showtime’s serial-killer thriller, which ripped through a second season that was so critically acclaimed and so successful with viewers that CBS actually aired bowdlerized versions of its episodes in prime time while waiting out the concurrent writers’ strike. The series had been promising in its first season, but in its second season, it dug deep to come up with a riveting story arc in which the many corpses Dexter Morgan had tossed into the ocean from his boat resurfaced and forced him to find a plausible cover story, while Sergeant James Doakes, the one coworker who suspected Dexter of being anything more than the dorky guy from the office, closed in on his prey.

Sure, the season ended poorly, with a finale that let Dexter off the hook for all the difficult moral choices it presented to him, but that was the sort of thing that could easily be fixed in the show’s third season. Dexter had arrived. It was the next great television drama, the show that would put Showtime on the map as real competition for the flailing HBO. Even better, it was anchored by a fantastic, defining performance by Michael C. Hall, who exploded his Six Feet Under persona to play a man with a razor-sharp smile that hid more demons than it ever let out.

It didn’t last. Dexter would never again rise to that level of quality, and the one time it commanded as much critical and audience buzz as it did in its first two years came almost entirely because of guest performer John Lithgow, who was killed off in the finale of the same season he joined the show. After that fourth season, the show staggered on for another four years of increasing irrelevance, and it will wrap its run on Sunday at the end of a season that has been almost completely free of drama or conflict, and which featured (in the penultimate episode of the whole series, no less) the idea that Dexter Morgan, the Bay Harbor Butcher, could learn to stop serial killing if he just fell in love with the right woman. (She, Hannah McKay, played by Yvonne Strahovski, was also a serial killer, who presumably also found her urges sated by true love. One can only imagine the episode set five years in the future when she’s ready to kill again because the thrill is gone, and Hall stares at her with a hangdog expression, like when Nancy and Elliot had to go to couples’ counseling on thirtysomething.)

Dexter did most of this to itself. Its fifth, sixth, and eighth seasons are frequently and stunningly incompetent, and its seventh season wastes a promising beginning in favor of the same old, same old. Yet it’s not hard to look back at the end of that second season and wonder just what went wrong. Now, that disappointing season finale looks like a harbinger of things to come, an early warning sign that nothing on the show would be taken seriously and consequences were unlikely to arise.

Look a little harder at the calendar, though, and it becomes even more apparent that Dexter’s flaws were thrown into sharp relief by another show that debuted a few months after that second season ended. Though greeted with mostly positive reviews, almost nobody watched its strike-abbreviated first season, and its renewal was hardly a sure thing. Yet over the course of its run it would grow into one of the best shows ever to air on television, eventually wrapping up at almost exactly the same time as Dexter. I’m talking, of course, about Breaking Bad, a show that did right almost everything Dexter did wrong.

As I'm writing on the Internet, I likely don’t have to explain to you just why Breaking Bad is having such a successful final run of episodes. You’ve likely seen for yourself. What’s interesting is just how similar the final 12 episodes of Dexter (so far) are to the final eight episodes of Breaking Bad (so far). Or, rather, what’s interesting is that both stories started in fairly similar places — someone had discovered the protagonist’s big secret, and a former partner was on the verge of turning on him — then took incredibly different paths toward their respective series finales. Breaking Bad heightened its conflict endlessly, leaving the quieter domestic drama the show had launched as far behind, in favor of sheer pulp. Dexter did … the opposite of that. (To be sure, it’s been difficult to ascertain exactly what Dexter has been trying to do for some time now.)

The above is cheating a little bit, because the two characters — the one who discovers the secret, and the former partner — on Breaking Bad are legitimately two characters (Hank and Jesse); on Dexter, they’re the same person: Dexter’s adopted sister Deb. Dexter has occasionally forgotten what to do with Deb throughout its run, but her survival has largely been assured since so much of the show's drama was built around wondering what would happen once she, a homicide detective, discovered that her brother was a murderer. She figured this out at the start of the show’s seventh season, which gave her a leg up of about 16 episodes on Hank, and in some ways, her journey through denial toward acceptance of her brother’s extracurricular activities was more nuanced than Hank’s journey on Breaking Bad. (Vince Gilligan and his writers had basically one episode to convey that journey, both by the very design of the show and by the necessity of AMC’s odd, bifurcated season structure.) Deb covered up Dexter’s activities because she loved him, then came to a kind of queasy peace with it before killing someone to protect him in the seventh season finale. She had, in other words, pulled the full Jesse Pinkman.

Of all the similarities between the programs at this late date — and here’s another one: Both final seasons have frequently revolved around fleets of new characters who are less immediately compelling to regular viewers than the regulars, though only Breaking Bad has had any idea what to do with its guest stars — perhaps the greatest one is contained above. Jesse became the secondary protagonist of Breaking Bad after shooting Gale Boetticher at the behest of Walter White. His journey toward a place where he was ready to give up on the drug trade was agonizing and honest, one of the show’s best emotional arcs, and the series respected that arc by giving him material as rich as Walter received. Dexter never realized that the burden of its story had shifted to Deb, instead treating her as an inconvenient thorn in Dexter’s side.

The worst thing about this is that Dexter had a potentially brilliant final arc — one that would have redeemed many of the show’s sins — set up in the first four episodes of its final season. But it didn’t bother pursuing it because the show eventually became unwilling to view Dexter Morgan as he truly was. In those first four episodes, Deb has quit the police force over her devastation about what happened when she tried to protect Dexter, and she is working as a private detective. She’s drunk and on the edge of despair. Dexter, like the uncaring asshole he can be, keeps trying to force himself back into her life. (Typical of the show at this late date, the series views this as a good thing, mostly.) At a pivotal point, Deb realizes a criminal she’s trying to bring in is probably just better off dead, so she murders him and covers it up (she has experience now). Pushed to the brink, she tries to confess to the earlier murder, but no one will let her, not believing she’s capable of it. Finally, she decides Dexter caused this to happen, so she has to rid the world of him. While driving him around, she jerks the wheel of her car and drives it into a lake, where it sinks beneath the surface.

It’s a dumb cliffhanger — Dexter isn’t going to kill its title character in the first four episodes of its final season — but it could have worked as a sign of Deb’s mental state. The show had two potential paths here to follow: It could have seen what happened when Deb decided to follow in her brother’s footsteps, culminating in Dexter and Deb simultaneously realizing that the other has to be removed from Miami if things are ever going to get better; or it could have had her realize what he’d made her do and come clean to the Miami police, giving all the show’s useless supporting characters something to do. Dexter, finally forced to go on the run, would struggle to stay one step ahead of the person who knew him best. Mix in one of the show’s famed serial-killer villains for Dexter to hunt down, and that might have made for something at least serviceable.

What Dexter handed viewers instead is one of the worst seasons of television from a formerly good show that’s ever existed. At all times, it’s been clear that the show viewers thought they were watching — a dark drama about a serial killer with questionable morality — was very different from the one the writers thought they were creating: a show about whether Dexter can transcend his nasty little habit, like it's an addiction to cigarettes. The show retrofitted Harry’s Code, the rules for serial killing that Dexter’s adopted father gave him as an attempt to keep his psychopathic tendencies in check, into something a psychotherapist whom Harry had once known came up with. It then spent far too long with a bunch of guest characters it tried to turn into a surrogate family for Dexter. (That psychotherapist was played by Charlotte Rampling, who was so good that it took more episodes than usual to realize the writers had no idea what to do with her.) Deb, instead of turning on her brother or copying his methods or anything, mostly tossed up her hands and said, “Serial killers! Whaddaya gonna do?” It was a colossal mess, dramatically inert even before Dexter was cured by love.

The most telling bit of evidence explaining just why Breaking Bad used so many of the same basic story elements as Dexter and beat it at its own game is that both shows sat down with Sundance’s The Writers' Room, a behind-the-scenes series about many of TV’s biggest shows, hosted by Jim Rash. The Breaking Bad episode indicates just how smart Gilligan & Co. are about knowing how much they can needle at Walter White’s morality, then pushing him exactly that far so the audience realizes the full weight of everything the man has done. The show works because of its great acting and fantastic plotting, sure, but it’s also successful precisely because it has a very clear view of its main character.

By contrast, the Writers' Room installment on Dexter indicates just how far gone the show’s writers are. They talk of the arc of the show less in terms of Dexter having to come to terms with what he’s done — or others having to pursue him because of those acts — and more in terms of the character becoming a “real boy.” They describe him in terms reserved for comic book superheroes. Sure, he’s killing people, but he’s only killing bad people, right? That’s not so awful. Maybe Dexter’s just misunderstood.

The problem with this idea is that Dexter itself has contradicted it in the final season. If Dexter can stop killing, if he was just a misdiagnosed sociopath (or whatever) who just needed the love of a good woman all along, then what about all of those people he killed on his table over eight seasons, tossed into the depths in Hefty bags? Couldn’t even one of those people have managed to turn their lives around? It’s as if the show forgot that a vital part of Harry’s Code has always been “Don’t get caught,” the tacit acknowledgement that what Dexter was doing was illegal and immoral, an attempt to do a patch on a malfunctioning bit of human software. In its second season — when it was revealed that Harry killed himself after seeing what he’d made his son — the show was clear-eyed enough to at least approach this idea. In its final season, that was shunted off to the side in favor of tearful good-byes and “I’m gonna miss you, pal” speeches that seem airlifted in from the series finale of M*A*S*H.

Dexter could have been a great show coming out of that second season. Think of how exciting it would be to have two antihero dramas going out at the top of their games right now, then think back to those early episodes of this season of Dexter to realize how close that notion actually came. There is always room for more than one antihero on TV. (Just ask Tony Soprano, who had to deal with a whole fleet of them while he was around.) But seeing the final season of Breaking Bad juxtaposed against the final season of Dexter simply reveals how little teeth the latter show had all along.

Like or hate Breaking Bad (or Walter White), it’s impossible to come away from that show and not think its creative team has complete and total control over what it wants to weigh about its main character. Yet even if you still like Dexter, even if you still cling to hope its finale might right the ship at the last possible moment, it’s difficult to watch this season and not conclude that the character became something else entirely along the course of its run in an attempt to soften him or make him more palatable. Walter White exposes the darkness inside all of us. Dexter Morgan had a chance to do that, but it was pushed aside in favor of more voice-over quips to the audience and reassurances that the guy you’re watching isn’t all that bad, so maybe you aren’t, either. It refuses to challenge either its characters or its audience, and that makes it more of a disappointment than anyone might have imagined back in 2007, when it had the world at its feet.

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Here is the facepalm-worthy interview mentioned in the article, with Scott Buck comparing Dexter to Pinocchio.



Michelle Duggar on Courtship

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In my home, we like to think very carefully about courtship and getting to know potential husbands and wives. Why would you consider really getting to know someone closely if you didn’t think that there would be a potential for marriage? A person really needs to ask themselves, are they at the point in their life where they are ready for marriage? If they are, they need to be careful in how they handle this whole idea of getting to know someone because the emotions and the hormones that are involved in that season of life can really get out of hand if you really don’t have a good perspective.

We want them to make sure they’re ready for marriage, and that they are really prepared for it. For one of my daughters, there would be a lot of things that she would want to consider. Can I really, truly manage a household? Am I able to manage the money, purchase the things I need for my home and get all those ducks in a row to be married and run a household?

In a potential suitor, we’d want a gentleman that loves the Lord and is growing in his relationship with him. He really needs to have that relationship as the priority of his life that drives him to do the things that God would want him to do. And he would have to be prepared to provide for his wife, which would mean he needs to have an income to support them and the stability to have a home, whether renting or owning. He’d also need to be a good protector for his wife and future family.


At this point, we’ve got a number of our older children that I think are ready for that next step in life. Our son John David has got a job and a home. He’s leasing that home out as rental income and putting the money aside. He’s also getting his pilot license right now and he’s been a fireman and a police officer, and now he’s a constable. So he’s definitely at that place in life where he’s ready to be a husband and a provider and he would be open to courting a young lady if he felt she would be the one for him.

Then our daughters, we’ve got Jana, Jill, Jessa and Jinger that are very capable of being married and having that close relationship with a special one. They manage a lot of our household; they like to do a lot of our shopping for clothes and food. That’s not a big deal for them, they love doing it anyway. But they’re good at it and good at managing things.

It’s just a matter of praying as different individuals come in to our lives. If they really sense that there’s an interest, the girls will study him and try to find out more about him in their time together. They need to get along really well and might get to know each other a little better through emailing or talking. There’s a lot of ways you can get to know somebody besides just being alone with them. They need to be a friend before they would even consider making a commitment to courtship.

And that’s kind of how it goes. It’s not just pairing off and going and doing things together alone, but getting to know them and their families too. Finding out from those that know the potential suitor, is this person quick to anger? How do they handle problems at work? Do they really have it together?

I think it’s probably going to be a little different for each of the kids. It’ll be interesting to see as time goes on how all of it pans out.

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Jennifer Connelly is ... homeless

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... for her new movie, anyway. Jennifer Connelly was snapped shooting scenes for her husband Paul Bettany's directorial debut on Saturday (21 September). Shelter follows Hannah (Connelly) and Tahir (Anthony Mackie), two homeless people who fall in love on the streets of New York.

More pics of Jennifer digging in a trash-can, co-star Anthony Mackie and director Paul Bettany below the cut. I hate to say it, but I'm not sure if I can buy that baseball cap on Jennifer. It's just too weird.

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Andy Samberg Marries Joanna Newsom!

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Funnyman Andy Samberg is officially a taken man!
The Saturday Night Live alum married girlfriend of five years Joanna Newsom, E! News can confirm. The duo made it official Saturday in Big Sur, Calif., at the Post Ranch Inn.
Joining the couple for their magical moments were family and friends.
NEWS: Other good news for Andy? We love his new show Brooklyn Nine Nine!
Andy proposed to his now wife back in February, and revealed to Ryan Seacrest on his morning show that although he was excited to wed his lady, the planning was stressful.
"So far, it's been nothing but stress and joy," he joked earlier this week. "The joy is the lady herself. The stress is the planning. We tried to go small and it was just impossible. There's too many relatives, too many friends."
We're glad he made it all the way through.

Congrats to the happy couple!


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R. Pattinson says acting is "one of the best jobs in the world"

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In Rob's recent interview for Marie Claire, he spoke about fame, getting older and his new movie with David Cronenberg, Maps to the Stars.

[...]I ask him what people overrate and underrate in an actor. «They probably think it’s a game. But it’s really work - great, but challenging. On the other hand, I can’t understand those stars who say "no way" when they’re asked if their children will follow in their footsteps. They don’t realise they’ve got one of the best jobs in the world, spiritually liberating». He says he still hangs out with his old friends, and I wonder how they cope with his success. «They’re great. We have no secrets. When I’m with them I rarely have problems with fans, partly because if they see me with them they tend to let me be. But if it does happen, my group becomes protective». I ask him what he considers betrayal by a friend, but he answers that a real friend doesn’t betray you, and if he does he isn’t. Yet finding new ones cannot be easy for a star. «No, not at all, I can easily see if someone isn’t in good faith».

I get the feeling he has managed not to disrupt his life - the life he had during that first interview five years ago. He is so calm that one immediately wonders what he was like at school, if anything suggested he might become what he is today. If he was a leader, for example. «I’ve never been a follower, that’s for sure, but not so enthusiastic as to take the responsibility of command either. I used to keep to myself». A rebel, like the kids who are rising up all over the world? «To tell the truth, when I was younger I used to think of rebellion as like being drunk all the time. No, that’s terrible – just joking!», he quickly corrects himself, rocking with laughter from head to toe. «But when I think of all the revolts everywhere, I realise how lucky I am. I was born in a country that has no need for revolutions, but not everyone’s that fortunate and they have the right to rebel when things aren’t going as they should».

«I’m now on the set of Map to the Stars», he continues, «with David Cronenberg. It’s a new experience because I’ve got a smaller part than usual - so far I’ve always been the lead actor. But that’s fine, I still prefer independent productions, I’m not ready for the majors: they take away your freedom. Here, on the other hand, I’m working with Julianne Moore, who’s amazing, and the script is fantastic. I love Cronenberg. Videodrome and Scanners are some of my favourite films». Now that he lives in Los Angeles, I ask him, does he think Hollywood manages to represent society? He bites his lip, with a serious look. «No, I don’t. The fact is that, in this moment in history, it’s hard to portray the contemporary world, even through music. We’re in a period of transition. I’m thinking of the 1970s and ‘80s, which were clearly defined. Even the ‘90s had grunge. What does 2000 boil down to? The Internet? Mobile phones? Will my generation be remembered with an iPhone in hand, intent on chatting and texting, communicating without saying anything? I’m not even on the social networks, not even under a false name. I tried once, but I deleted my account because it made no sense: my friends couldn’t even find me. I felt stupid».

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